Chuck Jones

     I have seen Chuck Jones's name many of times when watching old LoonyToons cartoons! Many of the jokes in cartoons he has directed follow a similar formula, lead the audience to make an assumption, then follow it up with something unexpected. Each character has its own clear desires, for example Pepe Le Pew's desire for love. This allows us to easily attach to characters, understand them, and be entertained. Human behavior and logic are the key factors Jones states that drive humor, and the best way to understand human behavior and logic is to study things in real life.
     This is a very interesting video, LoonyToon's jokes are always very clever and I never really understood how it worked. After watching this video about him it makes a lot more sense to how the design each joke and character. I hope to apply some of the key components they explain to my animations in the future to create more dynamic and interesting animations.

Weekly Comments

     This week I learned about principles of composition, juxtapositions, retouching and moods. In the future I want to learn about creating dynamic camera angles. What frustrated me this week was  missing Fridays class! Missing one class really hurts a lot, we move so quickly its hard to catch up! What made me happy this week was actually practicing all the Photoshop techniques we are getting to learn. 

     My link of interest this week is to a cool website called CgSociety. If you want to look for some creative inspiration whether it be for characters, environments, special effects this is a great website to browse around and get flex your creative muscle!

6 Steps to Beat Procrastination

     Procrastination, by far one of the biggest problems plaguing filmmakers, students, and artists alike. Animation mentor provides 6 steps to beat procrastination. First is to step back, analyze what you have to do with a good idea of what you have to do. Second is to make a list, so you dont end up forgetting what you are working on.  Third is to avoid the internet, it is very easy to get distracted, and before you know it hours have passed. Fourth do the most difficult things first! Don't let yourself take too much time on the easy stuff. Fifth, don't forget to plan, planning allows you to give yourself direction, so you don't forget what you are tackling as well as make a job much easier. Sixth is to break it down! One big task can be very intimidating, but breaking it down into small pieces will make it much easier and less of a huge hurdle to jump.

     I think that these steps would really benefit me and a lot of other people who can never seem to "find time" to work. I constantly find myself procrastinating, and you can definitely see where it takes a toll in my work and in the work of others. I will definitely be applying this throughout this year, to better my work productivity.

5 Psychological Mistakes that Beginning Filmmakers Make

     Every filmmaker makes mistakes, whether it is big or small, beneficial or detrimental. It is important for us to realize when we are making these mistakes and correct ourselves, otherwise we will make them again and again. One, we spend too much time working on our computers, being more hands on and free form will allow creativity to flow. Two, we care too much about what is currently popular. In other words we try to see what will get us the most exposure or money but in reality our best product will come from what we want to make and our love for it. Three, not making enough narrative content, people watch a film for the story, if you do not have enough explaining or content relevant to the story the audience will get lost. Four, failure is always a lurking in everyone's mind, as a film maker you shouldn't be spending brain power, and time dwelling on failure, when you can be focusing on doing your absolute best. Fifth, is to be humble, do not feel as though you are the most important  person working on a film, it benefits everyone for you to have a modest view of your own importance.
     Keeping your mind on track to avoid mistakes is very important when film making or doing anything for that matter. I think that avoiding these mistakes will allow me to work better creatively as well as in a team. Additionally, you would most likely look  better in the eyes of others as someone who is confident in their work, as well as generating original content.

THIS IS A PRACTICE POST

Final Project Analysis and Reflection

     My Idea was that two jocks come across a book, and the more they interact with it the more nerdy they become through their appearance and personality. I chose to interpret the script that way because of how vague the script is to allow creative freedom, but additionally it reads and sounds like a dumb Jock by how vague it is.

     I used lots of easing for my characters to give them to give them realistic but very cartoonish feeling like how their heads move, and how the arms sway. Follow through also assisted in giving a nice flow to it this is especially prevalent in their arm movements. Arc is used a lot through out my animation, a good example is how the torso moves. Staging was used to set the scene in the gym and classroom.
     The motion blur worked particularly well to show the sway of arms and speed of their actions. I think I grew in my technical skills a lot more in this course because I needed to do a lot of troubleshooting to get the specific experimental style I wanted to capture.
     Clean up  need better improvement in my opinion because, I should leave myself with more time to fix errors I find after finishing. In the future I will ask for peoples opinion to spot these issues faster, and I will leave myself with more time to fix them.
     I am very proud of what I made and going back to fix it up before releasing is a primary goal. The strategy I used helped me pretty well, scheduling myself was a big part so I knew when to render everything. I learned a lot in this project, like texture blending, cloths, various rigging methods. If I could do this project differently I would have spent more time making sure the rigs worked as expected so I wouldn't have to fix errors.

Final Project References

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/642505

I first needed to start off with some character designs for my animation. They were inspired by Brewster's characters because of their semi-sarcastic semi-serious nature. I really love his characters and the way they act.

The way I wanted it to be animated like south park but with more movement and depth, so everything I built was planar.

This is a tutorial I watched to figure out NCloth for my animation. The clothing on the blonde character is made with NCloth, the cloth is constrained to his body parts so it moves with him.
I used this tutorial to allow for the swapping out of the football player's jacket  for the color change. I think it is super useful using the Utility nodes now that I know they are there.

Creating the hair transformation, and clothing transformations, I used blend shapes! This tutorial helped me a lot, especially because it uses only one plane.